A Semi-Daily Advocate of the Modern School, Industrial Unionism, and
Individual Liberty.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Tom's Simple Theory of Teacher Development

You get "control" of the classroom and its processes.

One to thirty years later you realize that the vast majority of your students don't retain or use anything you taught them (five minutes to thirty years after you teach it), and you have to completely re-make your teaching and/or conception of your academic discipline.

Perhaps one problem with even some of our better ed schools is that professors and experienced teachers tend to be more interested in their own journey through step two than getting noobs through step one.

An ever-increasing emphasis on year-to-year test scores short-circuits this developmental process. What the long-term results of that change might be, nobody knows.